The U.S. State Department has jumped into the world of online communication with a vengeance. January 2012 has been designated 21st Century Statecraft month, and Administration officials have been busy tweeting, blogging, doing online Facebook chats, streaming video, and just about every other social media platform imaginable. As a public …
January 2012 is the U.S. Department of State’s “21st Century Statecraft Month.” What the State Department has in mind in this case is what former Undersecretary for Public Diplomacy James Glassman dubbed “Public Diplomacy 2.0”: using digital media to maximize outreach to foreign publics. Thus it is not a new …
Syria remains a holdout in the Middle East against the forces of popular discontent. The regime of Bashar al-Assad has so far stayed in power throughout the Arab uprisings where the autocrats of Egypt, Tunisia, and Libya have failed. Other regimes have been forced to make political changes. If you …
Don’t say the wheels of government always spin slowly. When there is an agenda at work, they can move with considerable speed, and in the deconstruction of American overseas broadcasting, things are moving fast. Consider a new feasibility study completed on November 10 regarding a merger of three major entities …
After President Barack Obama entered the White House in 2009, U.S. embassies around the world apparently felt that foreigners still did not know enough about him, despite the unprecedented blaze of global publicity surrounding his election. As has been remarked, U.S. public diplomacy in the age of Obama often amounts …
Whatever became of President Barack Obama’s vaunted foreign policy czars, who were to transform America’s international relations through soft power diplomacy? The answer is nothing good. One by one the czars have fallen by the wayside, leaving a trail of bureaucratic irritation and diplomatic failure behind them. The Administration now …
China has the dubious distinction of being one of the most controlled information environments in the world. Yet even China’s army of censors can at times have trouble staying on top of the vast sea of communication that flows through the Internet. The most recent challenge to government control is microblogging …
